REO Speedwagon drives on

REO Speedwagon headlines the South Shore Music Circus on Saturday night, part of a New England swing that will also find them at the Cape Cod Melody Tent on Friday.

Jay N. Miller

Guitarist Dave Amato, along with drummer Bryan Hitt, will soon be celebrating a quarter-century with chartbusting rockers REO Speedwagon within the next year, but they’re still considered “the new guys.”

That’s only because the rock quintet includes a core of long-term regulars, like founding member Neal Doughty on keyboards, who dates back to the band’s 1967 founding, along with lead singer Kevin Cronin (’72) and basssist Bruce Hall (’77). Cronin still writes most of the band’s new material – and they’ve never stopped producing new music – and the band still enjoys performing its panoply of hits from the 1980s, when they put an incredible 13 singles into the Top Forty.

REO Speedwagon headlines the South Shore Music Circus on Saturday night, part of a New England swing that will also find them at the Cape Cod Melody Tent on Friday. They’ll be at the Mohegan Sun Casino on August 24.

REO Speedwagon formed back in ‘67 with a bunch of eager music fans from the University of Illinois at Champaign, with Doughty and then-drummer Alan Gratzer the driving forces. By ‘71 they were turning enough heads to be signed by Epic Records, and their 1977 live album eventually went platinum. It was ‘78 before one of their albums cracked the Top Forty, but they really exploded upon the national scene with 1980’s “Hi Infidelity” album, which would sell 10 million copies and spawn four top-40 singles, like “Keep On Lovin’ You” and “Take It On the Run.”

Follow-up albums in ‘82 and ‘84 kept the band in the spotlight, with hits like “Keep the Fire Burning,” and “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” but things gradually slowed down as the 1990s dawned. By ‘96 they were done with Epic and bounced around some smaller labels. More recently, REO has released its own albums, including “Find Your Own Way Home” in 2007, and the 2010 “Not So Silent Night: Christmas with REO Speedwagon.”

Earlier this month, REO Speedwagon performed the national anthem at the June 5 Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game, and on June 7 they appeared at the Childhelp – Erase Child Abuse benefit concert – one of their major charity concerns – in Phoenix.

Amato had been a busy and much in-demand session player when he was recruited to join the band.

“I was recommended by a friend of mine,” said Amato, from his California home, before the band launched the current tour. “Jesse Harms had been playing keyboards in the Sammy Hagar band, and he was also writing songs with Kevin Cronin for REO. I had done all kinds of studio work with Hagar, Ted Nugent and Cher, and I was basically a studio musician at that point.

“Jesse told me the REO guys wanted a new guitarist, but it had to be a reputable, no-drugs guy,” Amato continued. “I went over to Kevin’s house, and they gave me two new songs, in very skeletal form, to see what I could do with them. We sat around and jammed together, and it seemed to work out. Afterwards we went outside and played hoops in Kevin’s backyard, and before I went home that night, they asked me to join REO. I guess it was an audition, but it was just a noon-to-5:30 afternoon where I had a lot of fun.”

With his varied background, Amato had no trouble adapting to the rock band.

“I had played all kinds of different things,” said Amato. “As an L.A. studio guy, I had backed everyone from Kim Carnes to Ted Nugent, and I knew REO and their music from way back. They’re an amazing group of guys, and we always had fun together. Twenty-four years later, I’m still having fun with them, even if they still remind me and Bryan that we are ‘the new guys.’”

REO is still doing some new music, and while Cronin is still the principal songwriter, the other band members also get their input.

“We’re always doing new music, one way or another,” said Amato. “Sometimes we’ll just re-invent the old songs and re-do them, try new approaches. We’re not changing them drastically, but for our own benefit we do try different intros or different tempos, just to keep it fresh for us.”

Obviously, fans expect certain songs every night, but with REO’s vast repertoire of hits, that does leave some room for mixing things up, and the setlist tends to vary quite a bit.

“People love the old songs, but we try hard to keep it fresh,” Amato explained. “We try to make it a little bit different every year. We change our stage setup every year, and we change costumes, come out with a different look every year, just trying to keep the ball rolling. We realize we’re very fortunate in that every night, our fans keep coming out to hear us play, so we are all of the same mindset, 1,000-percent invested in making tonight the best show we’ve ever done.”

Given the demand for the old chestnuts, it must be hard for REO to find time to work up new material. Having the other musicians collaborate is a tricky wicket, especially since Cronin has such a glittery record of writing hits, and is, after all, the face of REO.

“The secret to REO’s success is that Kevin clearly wrote some great songs,” said Amato. “It’s all good music, from love ballads to rockers, and it’s all based on rock ’n’ roll, but not at all offensive. We’re very conscious of putting on a good show, and not just standing there – we don’t look like we did in our 20s, but we do stay in shape. I’m going for a wardrobe session today – we play in rock clothes, not just jeans.”

REO is eager to get back to the two Massachusetts tent venues, even if that rotating stage can cause a bit of confusion from time to time.

“It is fun, but it can be hard to keep track of where our guitar tech is,” said Amato with a laugh. “You go to change guitars after a song, and you can’t find him right away. But, we just did a rotating stage at a rodeo in Texas and we had a ball.”